2. All M's pix are up
3. This is the end of this blog! Thank you for reading. Don't forget, Dana is going to be down in SA for 8 more months or so, so keep checking her blog for updates on more CDBAND adventures.
THE END
Saturday, August 2
Last Post
1. Rubio, Sal, and M are home safe
2. All M's pix are up
3. This is the end of this blog! Thank you for reading. Don't forget, Dana is going to be down in SA for 8 more months or so, so keep checking her blog for updates on more CDBAND adventures.
2. All M's pix are up
3. This is the end of this blog! Thank you for reading. Don't forget, Dana is going to be down in SA for 8 more months or so, so keep checking her blog for updates on more CDBAND adventures.
Wednesday, July 30
More Lima
There were a lot of kids at conference. We took them out to the park right outside the local (meeting room) and let them run wild every day for at least a couple of hours. This is one massive game of duck-duck-goose.
Mr. Dominican Republic won the contest for cutest boy at conference. I know I´m not supposed to have favorites, but...
Cirquito de Agua...Parque de la Reserva. I think it´s supposedly the world´s largest collection of fountains. Very beautiful.
Chau!Monday, July 28
Conferences
We have one more day out of 4 left for the Lima conferences. It has been a really awesome time both in the meetings (Heb 12) and taking care of the kazillion children running around. We have a ton of countries represented here: Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, Chile, the Dominican Republic, the US, and today, Canada. Pretty cool. Also, there are a lot of people who come from way up in the mountains of Peru. I wish I had a picture of them; maybe Bob or Dave have some from their trip to Huanuco...the ladies wear tons of hair clips on these fedora hats covered in tinsel, and wear these short skirts, 12 of them all at once for the cold, but they told me they go barefoot because they are so used to the gravel and stuff. They all speak Quechua better than Spanish, and have Quechua Bibles, which is pretty interesting.
Today a friend of the R´s, a Mennonite from Canada who married a Peruvian and lives about 2 hours outside of Lima, came to the meetings to see what they were like. It was cool to talk to them...he lived up in the subArctic for like 20 years. He has been here for 5 years.
Tomorrow in the afternoon, Danl and Cheyla, with all their kids but Dana, are taking off for Bolivia with a bunch of young people and the Bolivians. :-( The first of us to break apart. Then on Thursday, Dana, Dave, Christina, Lety, and others from here are taking the bus to Ecuador. And then on Friday AM, Rubio, Sal and I fly home!! So if we do anything more, I´ll let you all know, but things are coming to a close for me, and consequently, this blog as well. When I get home I will post my pictures and then post a post saying that I´ve posted the pictures. And PS, Dana wrote on her blog if you didn´t notice, and Bob posted pictures of Ecuador. Chau!
Today a friend of the R´s, a Mennonite from Canada who married a Peruvian and lives about 2 hours outside of Lima, came to the meetings to see what they were like. It was cool to talk to them...he lived up in the subArctic for like 20 years. He has been here for 5 years.
Tomorrow in the afternoon, Danl and Cheyla, with all their kids but Dana, are taking off for Bolivia with a bunch of young people and the Bolivians. :-( The first of us to break apart. Then on Thursday, Dana, Dave, Christina, Lety, and others from here are taking the bus to Ecuador. And then on Friday AM, Rubio, Sal and I fly home!! So if we do anything more, I´ll let you all know, but things are coming to a close for me, and consequently, this blog as well. When I get home I will post my pictures and then post a post saying that I´ve posted the pictures. And PS, Dana wrote on her blog if you didn´t notice, and Bob posted pictures of Ecuador. Chau!
Tuesday, July 22
The Adventures of Dana and M
We have been having some interesting experiences here in Lima. For example, a couple of days ago we went to some far out places in the city and visited people, including a Mormon who had a lot of questions for Roberto....C&D went and visited a girl and her boyfriend and they got saved.........and here is today´s story....
Today Dana and I went out with Frank Sr. to visit a man with cirrhosis of the liver. He has a lot of complications, like really bad ascites and I´m pretty sure he is malnourished as well. He is too poor to go as often as he should to remove the fluid from his abdominal cavity, so his stomach was huge since it´s been a few months now. Since Dana wants to be a nurse, she got to tag along for this visit. I came too, and when they asked me as a nutritionist my advice when he said he eats everything he can, I realized it´s pointless to say ¨Make sure to get x grams/kg protein a day, really you should eat more foods with branched chain amino acids and try not to eat your soup and main course because it´s not very good for you¨.....I think nutrition is useless here; there is no way you can change the diet of a nation.
Anyway he lives in this place which I would call a wrecking yard but I actually think they sell those cars. It was really poor. There is a semi container with makeshift shack built up around it. The brother lived in the container when he was single, but built up the rest when he got married. He now has 4 kids, and they have lived there for 32 years. The eldest child was in prison last time we came, and we visited him there....now he´s out and helping his dad. The youngest daughter came with us for the rest of the day. Their whole family has a lot of difficulties. Right now the mom is away traveling.
Anyway, we took this man to a clinic... supposedly clinics here are much more attentive than hospitals. The brother was telling us that he went to the hospital the first couple of times, but every night people would die and they would just haul them out, so he got so upset about it, he doesnt want to go anymore. He said more it made him ashamed because here were people who had never heard the gospel and they were dying (15 people died while he was there), and he never got a chance to tell them--he felt that was his responsibility and he was not doing what he should. Roberto went with him once, and passed out tracts to everyone in the room while he lay in bed. This really relieved his conscience, but now he always goes to the clinics.
So anyway, we took him to the clinic to get a blood sample to find out his prothrombin & coagulation times, to see if he could get the fluid taken out. He is sure the Lord will heal him; however it is really dangerous to take out all this fluid, and he is so tired and in a lot of pain. Both taking the fluid out or leaving it in is pretty risky.
It was interesting; across the street from the clinic was this huge, beautiful, ancient building...and it turned out to be the Central Morgue of Lima....kind of surprising.
We had 2 hours to wait for the results of the blood test, so we took him back to the house and the daughter came with us to Cerro de Pino. This is a hill absolutely covered in shacks, even poorer than the house we just went to. The whole thing is just a maze of colorless little huts thrown together, with all these skinny little stairs running up and in between the buildings with dogs and filth everywhere. We took a moto-taxi up the hill, which is a motorcycle with a cover over it and a seat thrown on the back so that us 3 girls could ride back there, and Frank sat up front with the driver. We were pretty heavy (5 of us on a motorcyle) so it was a crazy ride, but we made it up there and then had to go around knocking on doors and asking people where the people lived that we wanted to visit. Frank said that no one has visited them for years and years because it is way too dangerous. To impart some comfort to you all, across the way was another hill equally covered in humanity and huts, that supposedly is far more dangerous. Now, also, it is supposedly getting a little better; for example, now there are a lot more stairs up and down the hillside instead of just dirt paths.
Anyway, finally we found the (very small) house and we came inside and met the lady and this other guy there and chatted a bit, and then read Psalm 34 with them:
THEN. =) We climbed down the mountain and at the very bottom WAS THE BIGGEST FRUIT MARKET I HAVE EVER SEEN EVER IN MY LIFE. First of all we walked through the part where there were just thousands and thousands of crates stacked up all around waiting to be filled with fruit and shipped out. The boy that was from the house could look at all the crates and tell me exactly what fruits went in each. Then we went inside. This place was like....HUGE. Like blocks and blocks worth of fruit, every kind of fruit you can imagine and then some that you really can´t imagine, too. There were strawberries, all these types of oranges, red and GREEN apples, which I havent seen for a while, kiwis, plums, peaches, carambolas, chirimoyas, maracuya, truckfuls of beautiful pineapples that only cost half a sol per kilo, lots of different varieties of avocados (called paltas here) ranging from the size of your finger to bigger than both your hands put together!!...etc, etc, etc. We stopped and bought this fruit called granadilla. At first I was like, oh great, they picked the grossest fruit in the whole market for us to try, BUT. Oh man. It was awesome. It has a plasticky, orange hard shell that you puncture open and then peel off all the cottony stuff inside, until you get to the gooey gray inside that is full of gigantic seeds. You arent supposed to eat it, but slurp it all up and swallow it down all in one gulp. It looked a little dubious, but is actually SO DELICIOUS. Anyway, so we continued walking around in there with our mouths hanging open in awe at all this fruit, while they kept telling us things like, ¨Try this fruit, it´s good for your kidneys¨ and things like that. :-) It was a very cool experience.
After the fruit market, we went back to the clinic and stared at the blood results, and nobody really knew what they meant, but they told us to come back tomorrow because we missed the doctor. So we went back to the brother´s house and told him about that. He´s in a lot of pain, so he was a little bummed, but he has been waiting for so long, he felt like he could wait another day or two more. We prayed with him, and he also wanted to pray for Dana´s grandpa, too, so he prayed after that again. He told me that he knew the Lord had given this cirrhosis (but mainly the ascites) to him, and he´s really not sure what the purpose is, but the Lord is in control. It is amazing how these people are sooo cheerful even when they have all these tough things happening to them....once again, ¨I will bless the LORD at all times¨.
Today everyone else went to the zoo. There was a brother who´s dying, and his wish was to go to the zoo, but at the last minute he got a lot worse and had to go to the emergency room without going to the zoo. :-( But everyone else went. Sooo Dana and I are just hanging out here at the Internet cafe telling yall about our day. The End!
Today Dana and I went out with Frank Sr. to visit a man with cirrhosis of the liver. He has a lot of complications, like really bad ascites and I´m pretty sure he is malnourished as well. He is too poor to go as often as he should to remove the fluid from his abdominal cavity, so his stomach was huge since it´s been a few months now. Since Dana wants to be a nurse, she got to tag along for this visit. I came too, and when they asked me as a nutritionist my advice when he said he eats everything he can, I realized it´s pointless to say ¨Make sure to get x grams/kg protein a day, really you should eat more foods with branched chain amino acids and try not to eat your soup and main course because it´s not very good for you¨.....I think nutrition is useless here; there is no way you can change the diet of a nation.
Anyway he lives in this place which I would call a wrecking yard but I actually think they sell those cars. It was really poor. There is a semi container with makeshift shack built up around it. The brother lived in the container when he was single, but built up the rest when he got married. He now has 4 kids, and they have lived there for 32 years. The eldest child was in prison last time we came, and we visited him there....now he´s out and helping his dad. The youngest daughter came with us for the rest of the day. Their whole family has a lot of difficulties. Right now the mom is away traveling.
Anyway, we took this man to a clinic... supposedly clinics here are much more attentive than hospitals. The brother was telling us that he went to the hospital the first couple of times, but every night people would die and they would just haul them out, so he got so upset about it, he doesnt want to go anymore. He said more it made him ashamed because here were people who had never heard the gospel and they were dying (15 people died while he was there), and he never got a chance to tell them--he felt that was his responsibility and he was not doing what he should. Roberto went with him once, and passed out tracts to everyone in the room while he lay in bed. This really relieved his conscience, but now he always goes to the clinics.
So anyway, we took him to the clinic to get a blood sample to find out his prothrombin & coagulation times, to see if he could get the fluid taken out. He is sure the Lord will heal him; however it is really dangerous to take out all this fluid, and he is so tired and in a lot of pain. Both taking the fluid out or leaving it in is pretty risky.
It was interesting; across the street from the clinic was this huge, beautiful, ancient building...and it turned out to be the Central Morgue of Lima....kind of surprising.
We had 2 hours to wait for the results of the blood test, so we took him back to the house and the daughter came with us to Cerro de Pino. This is a hill absolutely covered in shacks, even poorer than the house we just went to. The whole thing is just a maze of colorless little huts thrown together, with all these skinny little stairs running up and in between the buildings with dogs and filth everywhere. We took a moto-taxi up the hill, which is a motorcycle with a cover over it and a seat thrown on the back so that us 3 girls could ride back there, and Frank sat up front with the driver. We were pretty heavy (5 of us on a motorcyle) so it was a crazy ride, but we made it up there and then had to go around knocking on doors and asking people where the people lived that we wanted to visit. Frank said that no one has visited them for years and years because it is way too dangerous. To impart some comfort to you all, across the way was another hill equally covered in humanity and huts, that supposedly is far more dangerous. Now, also, it is supposedly getting a little better; for example, now there are a lot more stairs up and down the hillside instead of just dirt paths.
Anyway, finally we found the (very small) house and we came inside and met the lady and this other guy there and chatted a bit, and then read Psalm 34 with them:
I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise shall continually be in my mouth.
Even when people live like that....it says at all times!! Then the dad came in; he makes crates for the fruit business for 1 sol apiece (about 3 soles to the dollar). He had a nice talk with us about the Lord and also about how things are getting pretty bad in this world.THEN. =) We climbed down the mountain and at the very bottom WAS THE BIGGEST FRUIT MARKET I HAVE EVER SEEN EVER IN MY LIFE. First of all we walked through the part where there were just thousands and thousands of crates stacked up all around waiting to be filled with fruit and shipped out. The boy that was from the house could look at all the crates and tell me exactly what fruits went in each. Then we went inside. This place was like....HUGE. Like blocks and blocks worth of fruit, every kind of fruit you can imagine and then some that you really can´t imagine, too. There were strawberries, all these types of oranges, red and GREEN apples, which I havent seen for a while, kiwis, plums, peaches, carambolas, chirimoyas, maracuya, truckfuls of beautiful pineapples that only cost half a sol per kilo, lots of different varieties of avocados (called paltas here) ranging from the size of your finger to bigger than both your hands put together!!...etc, etc, etc. We stopped and bought this fruit called granadilla. At first I was like, oh great, they picked the grossest fruit in the whole market for us to try, BUT. Oh man. It was awesome. It has a plasticky, orange hard shell that you puncture open and then peel off all the cottony stuff inside, until you get to the gooey gray inside that is full of gigantic seeds. You arent supposed to eat it, but slurp it all up and swallow it down all in one gulp. It looked a little dubious, but is actually SO DELICIOUS. Anyway, so we continued walking around in there with our mouths hanging open in awe at all this fruit, while they kept telling us things like, ¨Try this fruit, it´s good for your kidneys¨ and things like that. :-) It was a very cool experience.
After the fruit market, we went back to the clinic and stared at the blood results, and nobody really knew what they meant, but they told us to come back tomorrow because we missed the doctor. So we went back to the brother´s house and told him about that. He´s in a lot of pain, so he was a little bummed, but he has been waiting for so long, he felt like he could wait another day or two more. We prayed with him, and he also wanted to pray for Dana´s grandpa, too, so he prayed after that again. He told me that he knew the Lord had given this cirrhosis (but mainly the ascites) to him, and he´s really not sure what the purpose is, but the Lord is in control. It is amazing how these people are sooo cheerful even when they have all these tough things happening to them....once again, ¨I will bless the LORD at all times¨.
Today everyone else went to the zoo. There was a brother who´s dying, and his wish was to go to the zoo, but at the last minute he got a lot worse and had to go to the emergency room without going to the zoo. :-( But everyone else went. Sooo Dana and I are just hanging out here at the Internet cafe telling yall about our day. The End!
Monday, July 21
Lima, Peru cont
Plaza de Armas.
It´s Christina´s bday!! We went out and celebrated at Megaplaza.
It´s Christina´s bday!! We went out and celebrated at Megaplaza.Other stuff: Rubio, Dave, Bob, and Roberto went to Huanuco for 4 days.
Friday, July 18
Lima, Peru
Hi everybody, we made it to Lima. We left Quito on Wednesday night, and actually made it there early. Ecuador´s bus system is less ´comodo´ than Peru because most people do not travel by bus...therefore they invest less in it. That bus ride was cool, though, after the sun came up at least, because we got to drive by hours of banana plantations. REALLY cool to see how they grow bananas.
Anyway, that bus ride ended about 12 hours later in Huaquiles, Ecuador, right on the border. You can tell that you are close to Peru because the lush, green, beautiful jungle sort of disappears more or less instantly into brown, dry, flat desert. We got our passports stamped to get out of Ecuador, and then took a taxi ride through no man´s land to Tumbes, Peru, where we hired a man to pile all of our luggage onto his little cart attached to his bike, for $5 (We argued him down from $8, but after seeing that huge pile, I felt a little bit bad for him...maybe he really deserved those extra $3). We sort of walked along side him, through this extremely busy street market full of bananas, pineapples, other fruits, monkeys, etc, etc, etc, and full of people and these little motorcycles with extra seats in them (´trici taxis´). Whatever, eventually we got stamped into Peru, ate a lunch somewhere (choices: ceviche with a large, whole fish, or liver soup and chicken), and made it to the economy bus (semi cama instead of totally reclining seats) for the next leg. So we pulled into Lima this morning around 10.30 am, a 35 hr ride.
After hanging out in various places for a bit, we eventually split up--Sal, M, The Cousin, and Maicol are staying at the R´s house, where everyone is arriving from everywhere for the wedding plus Christina and Lety are here! We have been having fun, ...we went shopping for wedding presents, and Lety asked for (guess what) a coffee and ended up making it because the guy at the cafetera couldnt make it right...HA. The others are staying at the Flores, and we havent really seen any of them since, except Bob who dropped in for a minute.
Thats all for now, wedding tomorrow!
Anyway, that bus ride ended about 12 hours later in Huaquiles, Ecuador, right on the border. You can tell that you are close to Peru because the lush, green, beautiful jungle sort of disappears more or less instantly into brown, dry, flat desert. We got our passports stamped to get out of Ecuador, and then took a taxi ride through no man´s land to Tumbes, Peru, where we hired a man to pile all of our luggage onto his little cart attached to his bike, for $5 (We argued him down from $8, but after seeing that huge pile, I felt a little bit bad for him...maybe he really deserved those extra $3). We sort of walked along side him, through this extremely busy street market full of bananas, pineapples, other fruits, monkeys, etc, etc, etc, and full of people and these little motorcycles with extra seats in them (´trici taxis´). Whatever, eventually we got stamped into Peru, ate a lunch somewhere (choices: ceviche with a large, whole fish, or liver soup and chicken), and made it to the economy bus (semi cama instead of totally reclining seats) for the next leg. So we pulled into Lima this morning around 10.30 am, a 35 hr ride.
After hanging out in various places for a bit, we eventually split up--Sal, M, The Cousin, and Maicol are staying at the R´s house, where everyone is arriving from everywhere for the wedding plus Christina and Lety are here! We have been having fun, ...we went shopping for wedding presents, and Lety asked for (guess what) a coffee and ended up making it because the guy at the cafetera couldnt make it right...HA. The others are staying at the Flores, and we havent really seen any of them since, except Bob who dropped in for a minute.
Thats all for now, wedding tomorrow!
Monday, July 14
More pictures
On the right hand side of the page, there are two new links, one for my pictures as of today, and one of Franklin's pictures.
Saturday, July 12
Quito, Ec
Wow, most posts I have ever done in one day...ever...
So, we had a good border crossing and met all these people from the States coming into Colombia... weeeeird to speak English to other people. They heard there were absolutely no tourists in Colombia, and they were right cuz we were leaving.
Stef served us spaghetti, salad...............choc chip cookies.....mmmmmmmm!!!!!!
oK, i didn't really have that much to say. chau.
So, we had a good border crossing and met all these people from the States coming into Colombia... weeeeird to speak English to other people. They heard there were absolutely no tourists in Colombia, and they were right cuz we were leaving.
Stef served us spaghetti, salad...............choc chip cookies.....mmmmmmmm!!!!!!
oK, i didn't really have that much to say. chau.
Pedro's Pictures
Ok, I've been back home for a couple of days now, and I finally just got my pictures online. I took more than a thousand while I was down there, but I weeded them down to less than 800 to post.
Check it out: http://picasaweb.google.com/petergorgas
Your faithful blogger,
Pedro
Check it out: http://picasaweb.google.com/petergorgas
Your faithful blogger,
Pedro
Pasto II
We are leaving to go to Quito in like 15 minutes!!
Yesterday everyone went out to the countryside and played soccer.
Yesterday everyone went out to the countryside and played soccer.
Pasto, Col
I wrote this on the 10th in my journal, but we haven{t had internet till now.
It is amazing how wonderfully we have been taken care of here every place we go. We have had so many awesome experiences and never really have had to go for long without the necessary stuff like running water, good bathrooms, showers, brushing teeth, etc. Yeah I have worn these jeans for 10 days in a row and they probably are covered in many strange strains of bacteria, but we are so well taken care of and have absolutely nothing to complain about. {When I sent you without purse, or scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said NOTHING[
POPAYAN, COLOMBIA
We spent one night there. It was great. One of the hermanos is in the military and had the Colombian Army send in enough mattresses and pillows for us all.
The house is huge, but seems to have a whole lot of people living in it. Their business is making cheese, so there is a cheese shop attached. I really liked Popayan and I wish I could have walked around the town a little more, but we werent there for long. That night (the 9th) we had a nice long meeting there in the living room, about 25 of us. They are so hungry for the Word of God there. The people have many exciting stories...for example, one sister works for the government and has been taken by FARC twice...a great story that will have to wait till later to tell, it{s kind of long. Meeting all these people but being tired from buses, etc, makes me excited thinking about meeting so many believers when we get to heaven, and then we wont be so bogged down by problems like sleepiness or selfishly not reaching out. Our visit means so much but I feel like I dont love enough, really.
PASTO, COLOMBIA
State of Nariño, 2 hrs from Ecuador border
The bus ride to Pasto was about 6 hours. The scenery has changed and we are now quite high in altitude, in this town lying under the active volcano Galeras. This town has some beautiful plazas and architecture. It is also a bit chilly. Arriving we were faced with a sort of a math problem, trying to fit like 25 suitcases plus more than 11 of us into 3 small cars, aughh!! We have been blessed with a palace to stay in, actually a churh with many empty roms. I feel very spoiled having this gigantic place for just us. The believers here are, once again, so awesome and are very excited that we could come. It was a woman form the States who first brought them the gospel bak in 1934, so more visitors from the States is really exciting. Tonight before having meeting on Eph 4 in someones house, we enjoyed a big meal including pasta soup (Pasta in Pasto. This was beyond my wildest dreams since most of the soups we get contain something a bit more questionable) and more broasted chicken.
Tomorrow the Peruvians (R. Chavez and Frank) and Maicol and cousin from Ven will join us. They are travelling all night and all day trying to catch up. Anyway, more will be happening tomorrow, but thats the latest. We are currently very excited to be sleeping on mattresses and to be living out of suitcases instead of backpacks, since we are staying here till Sat..long enough to open up our bags and find what we packed to bring down here.
7-10-08
It is amazing how wonderfully we have been taken care of here every place we go. We have had so many awesome experiences and never really have had to go for long without the necessary stuff like running water, good bathrooms, showers, brushing teeth, etc. Yeah I have worn these jeans for 10 days in a row and they probably are covered in many strange strains of bacteria, but we are so well taken care of and have absolutely nothing to complain about. {When I sent you without purse, or scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? And they said NOTHING[
POPAYAN, COLOMBIA
We spent one night there. It was great. One of the hermanos is in the military and had the Colombian Army send in enough mattresses and pillows for us all.
The house is huge, but seems to have a whole lot of people living in it. Their business is making cheese, so there is a cheese shop attached. I really liked Popayan and I wish I could have walked around the town a little more, but we werent there for long. That night (the 9th) we had a nice long meeting there in the living room, about 25 of us. They are so hungry for the Word of God there. The people have many exciting stories...for example, one sister works for the government and has been taken by FARC twice...a great story that will have to wait till later to tell, it{s kind of long. Meeting all these people but being tired from buses, etc, makes me excited thinking about meeting so many believers when we get to heaven, and then we wont be so bogged down by problems like sleepiness or selfishly not reaching out. Our visit means so much but I feel like I dont love enough, really.
PASTO, COLOMBIA
State of Nariño, 2 hrs from Ecuador border
The bus ride to Pasto was about 6 hours. The scenery has changed and we are now quite high in altitude, in this town lying under the active volcano Galeras. This town has some beautiful plazas and architecture. It is also a bit chilly. Arriving we were faced with a sort of a math problem, trying to fit like 25 suitcases plus more than 11 of us into 3 small cars, aughh!! We have been blessed with a palace to stay in, actually a churh with many empty roms. I feel very spoiled having this gigantic place for just us. The believers here are, once again, so awesome and are very excited that we could come. It was a woman form the States who first brought them the gospel bak in 1934, so more visitors from the States is really exciting. Tonight before having meeting on Eph 4 in someones house, we enjoyed a big meal including pasta soup (Pasta in Pasto. This was beyond my wildest dreams since most of the soups we get contain something a bit more questionable) and more broasted chicken.
Tomorrow the Peruvians (R. Chavez and Frank) and Maicol and cousin from Ven will join us. They are travelling all night and all day trying to catch up. Anyway, more will be happening tomorrow, but thats the latest. We are currently very excited to be sleeping on mattresses and to be living out of suitcases instead of backpacks, since we are staying here till Sat..long enough to open up our bags and find what we packed to bring down here.
7-10-08
Wednesday, July 9
Popayan and Photos
We are here in Popayan for the night. Our first night not on a bus for 5 nights! Ben managed to upload pix to Picasa---http://picasaweb.google.com/brimlow.benjamin/SudAmerica2. Hopefully there will be many more to come, but this brings you up to date on some goings on up to the night we left Bucaramanga for Bogota.
Some interesting things about our trip last night/this morning:
-The police stopped us again and searched our bags. There are a lot more soldiers on the road in the Southwest of Colombia. These, once again, are the good guys making sure we are not bad guys. Here is one of our friends......
-A lot more farmland down here in the southwest.
-I find the graffiti in both Colombia and Venezuela interesting. It is usually politically minded or love notes. I would have to say Venezuela had much more dramatically political graffiti, but here is some interesting stuff from today...
-Since we picked up our luggage that we had left in Bogota for the Venezuela trip, we have SO MUCH LUGGAGE. Here it is all coming off the bus....it is amazing that it made it both on the bus and off of it, ....although we did have to pay the overweight fee. sry can{t rotate this...
Other random information I have neglected to comment on since I am always in such a hurry when Im posting...
-The time difference in Colombia is 2 hours (from CA or WA), but the time difference in Venezuela is 2.5 hours. This is really weird.
-In Barquisimeto, they served us peanut butter for breakfast!!! yaaay.
-Accents are really interesting in both Ven and Col. In Ven, they don{t pronounce their r{s, and in Colombia, they don{t pronounce their d{s. In Colombia, [ratito[ or similar words are said [Ratiko[. In Col, soda pop is gaseosa, but in Ven it is refresco. Sorry about the fact that this computer has inaccesible quotation marks...
-Venezuela has awesome bread.
-The main thing to serve with meals (equivalent of serving tortillas) is the Arepa, which can come in varying forms of tastiness, ranging from greasy-napkin-like flavor to a pancake. The ones in Bogota that we first got nearly turned us off completely because they so accurately fit the greasy-napkin or raw pork rind description, but we soon discovered that homemade ones can actually be very yummy. They can be dipped in soup, stuffed with something that resembles cheese, or eaten plain. It is very funny to hear the people describe their disgust for Mexican tortillas, because honestly they aren{t THAT different.
-Colombian food is SALTY.
-The Prez of Venezuela makes sure everyone remembers who is in power on a daily basis. For instance, hopefully someone will post a pic of the common posters around Venezuela saying SI CON CHAVEZ, or his motto, Patria, Socialismo, o Muerte. It was interesting to come back into Colombia and feel the absence of such a political push for revolution. Some of our group were hoping to get Chavez tshirts but we have not been doing the typical touristy shopping, so we weren{t able to....I think the only thing we bought in Venezuela was bread and water???
-Buses here are VERY cold. They boast of [Fuerte AC[ on the sides of bus and we heartily agree. We had to pack for tropical, hot, humid weather for the Caribean...plus an extra change of subzero-appropriate apparel.
-Oh, and the last thing, just out of interest. THERE ARE NO OTHER AMERICAN TOURISTS. Bob wants to add that dropping off Pedro at the airport, we were the only non-Latino people, and this was in the entire International terminal at that!!! However, its interesting that in Bucaramanga, which is pretty far away from the main tourist drag, nobody really thought it was too extraordinary that 11 gringos were walking thru town.
Ok, that{s all for now. We are having fun, and we are Lord willing heading for Pasto tomorrow for a couple of nights. Thanks for prayers!
Tuesday, July 8
Bogota, again
Hi, real fast. We have to head out in a coupla minutes back on our mad dash. We left the Island on Saturday, took the ferry and got on a bus to Barquisimeto, Venezuela right in time for Breaking of Bread. It was a super encouraging time, albeit a bit of a battle against sleep. Afterward we all went out and had giant pizzas....then off on another night bus to the border with a successful border crossing aided by a couple on their honeymoon.....then we took another bus to Bucaramanga, once again a brief but awesome visit with our friends from there that seemed to involve a lot of eating.....then hopped on another night bus for Bogota, making it 3 night buses and abou 40 hours of travel. We actually made it to Bogota with time to spare, so once again the day was filled with a lot of eating, and relaxing a bit. We got Pedro off to the airport in, we think, enough time for his flight, and we are about to catch yet another night bus for Popoyan, in the south of Colombia. From there we will go to Pasto and then hopefully be in Quito, Ecuador for Saturday and Sunday. So lots of travel, but so far sticking to our deadlines! Woohoo!
Wednesday, July 2
Isla de Margarita, off Venezuela Continued
On account of the sheer magnitude of the stress involved and oppressive burdens of responsibility, the mysteriously named M asked me to help inform the masses about our heroic exploits in South America. When I read this blog last night I discovered that compared to ¨M¨and ¨Rubio,¨the name used to refer to me is dangerously close to my real name, so from now on the character refered to as Pete will be called Pedro, so as not to compromise my identity.
Ok, I´m supposed to write more about what we did on the Isla of Margarita, so I´ll explain some pictures I took when we went to the beach the first day here. It all started off like any normal trip to the Venezuelan beaches. After slathering ourselves in canola oil and butter to protect against the menacing South American sun rays, we donned our caps and shades and hopped into a couple of cabs. Now that I´m writing, I wish I had the motivation to go find a picture of these cabs on my camera and upload it, but I already uploaded the pictures I was going to write about, so just picture some big old cars in various states of disrepair; some with doors falling off, some with windshields cracked and shattered beyond recognition, and all with engines that growl and rattle like they´re burning more oil and transmission fluid than gasoline. Imported car parts are hard to come by on the island. Ok, so we got to the beach safely, and walked toward the dunes expected the soothing sound of singing birds and softly breaking surf to greet our ears. Instead, we heard low drum beats and a mysterious chanting. As we warily neared a circle of loincloth-clad island natives waving fearsome war masks and instruments of decapitation, I could tell this wasn´t the local boy scouts earning their ocean safety merit badge. Since I don´t know who exactly reads this blog and their tolerance for vivid depictions of frightening scenes, I´ll skip over the gruesome details, but in short I broke up their little tete-a-tete to insure the safety of my companions. We walked over the what the group had apparantly been ciricling around, and much to our horror, we found only these sad remains of their ritual:
Yes, we had stumbled upon an ancient tribe of head-hunting savages. This adventure was getting deeper than we had ever hoped for. So, we found a spot further down the beach, and set up our beach stuff.
I can´t think of anything particularly exciting we did in the water, other than the usual, swimming, floating, not sinking, keeping our heads above water, splashing, frolicking in the frothy waves, doggie-paddling, and whatever else people do in water other than drowning. We swam out to a big rock, which was a lot more fun than I just made it sound in this sentence.
Later, when we got tired of swimming and wanted to find other creative ways to get sunburned, we went for a walk down the beach. When I say we, I don´t mean everyone, but I don´t know everyone´s code names on this blog, so just assume it was Pedro, J, Ruby, Slick, Space City Sam, and Jane X, which I´m pretty sure are all names of characters in this blog, but I haven´t been fllowing the episodes too closely so I´m not entirely sure, but anyway, we started walking down the beach. After a while, we came across a bunch of washed-up drift wood and scattered palm tree fronds littering the beach. Ever the ecotourist, I decided we should help clean up the beach. I also noticed my companions seemed to be suffering from the first symptoms of the third-degree sunburns we would all eventually incur that day, so I thought I´d throw together a little shelter, a temporary solar respite, if you will. Anyway, after lashing together a few pieces of driftwood, tossing a few palm fronds on top, and fashioning a makeshift door or two from immediately available materials, I had constructed a crude beach shelter.
Voila.
And yes, you may have noticed by now, I don´t know how to write accents above letters.
Sooooo, after cooling off in the shade of my shabby but adequate construction, we continued down the beach. Actually, I´m kind of getting tired of writing this intense narrative of our factual adventures, but I still want to show you this cool cave we found on the beach, so to make a long story short, we found a couple cool caves. The first one, which looked like this (looking in the entrance), was about 3 or 4 feet high. After walking about 30 feet, the cave branched off the the right and continued straight. Off to the right, the cave led to another entrance which was closer to the water and had waves coming in. And by entrance, I don´t mean to exlude its use as an exit, because I did in fact leave the cave that way. Where it continued straight, it just went further into the mountainside, and it was too dark and scary and ferocious-monster-lair looking for me to go down. This other picture shows the inside of the cave looking out.
And....... this is another cave that had a really big opening and waves came inside, and it was cool.
The End
Ok, it´s late and stuff, so I´m done writing. I took lots of pictures that I´ll post online and provide a link to here soon, because I´m going home next week. M is responsible for anything that is posted on this blog, so if you have any questions or comments about the validity of anything you read here, feel free to ask her. Thanks,
Pedro
Isla de Margarita, off Venezuela
-Conference at a farm outside of Bucaramanga Colombia. Everyone is suuuuper friendly, and the meetings were held outside under that roof... in the evenings everbody swam.
On Monday we left for 48 hours of travel, first a bus to Cucuta, Colombia (on the border) where we had to leave the 3 Peruvians we had with us... 2 of them will be catching up with us soon, but they didn´t know that they needed visas to come in. From there we took a bus across the border into Venezuela. We arrived in the terminal 40 minutes after the last bus was supposed to leave to Puerto la Cruz Venezuela, but we ended up getting on it anyway.......a double decker :) for 20 hrs. We got to Puerto La Cruz boat terminal 30 minutes after the ferry left for the island...so we hung out till 2 am to catch the next one. This is Jack hanging out at the end of the wharf while waiting for the 2 am ferry.
Sooooo we got to the Isla at around 7.30 am this am after traveling for 2 days..... everyone is really nice here too and we all went and hung out in the Carribbean Sea all day and got broasted. Here is Dana enjoying herself.
So, we are having fun and doing well!!! And I will be adding some contributing editors, hopefully they will add something later. Em
Thursday, June 26
Bucaramanga, Colombia
Since I last posted:
-I ate a large ant. Pete ate a lot more, since he bought them, and they are even better when mixed with chocolate chips. They are quite pricey, $7000 pesos. They have a very protein-ish taste. Kind of similar to a roast beef sandwich, I think. They are like an inch long with very puffy two-part bodies (ewwww), and I suppose they must be popular in Bogota because many little restaurants display a sign proclaiming that they sell them. They are NOT my favorite snack.
-We learned to take the TransMilenio bus in Bogota. Their main in-city transportation system, only costing $1400 Colombian pesos to ride as much as you want. ($1650 to the dollar--this takes some adjusting to in calculations since it is not the easiest to divide by).
-Went to a huge salt mine outside of Bogota. We tried to take the train, but found out it didn´t run on weekdays. Oh well, saved $20,000 Col! We looked around the train yard, though, and Danl considered buying one......................
-We took a 10.5 hr bus to Bucaramanga, our first bus ride of the trip. Gracias a Dios, we actually made the bus and most importantly, we arrived safe and sound although we did get stopped by Colombian soldiers (that´s the good guys, though) and all the guys had to get off (and Dana--she didn´t know she wasn´t supposed to) and get searched. Meanwhile all the little girls on the bus blew kisses and waved to the soldiers as they looked thru peoples bags on the bus for drugs or whatever. Also, we went down the ´Pescadero´ to get down into Bucaramanga, which starts very high up and many hairpin curves later, we are down below... I was pretty thankful it was at night by that time so I didn´t have to see as well, although seeing clouds floating down below you hundreds of feet down is kind of disconcerting. The countryside is so, so beautiful though. One brother from Bogota (actually from Quito) who came with us was commenting on how beautiful Colombia was, but a very well-kept secret (perhaps guerillas help keep people away? haha)
-It´s really warm and humid here. We all got divided up among the families here, so Dana, Lana, Sal, and I are here on the third floor of this house living with this cute little family in a cute little apartment!!! But tonight the conference starts and I think we might be going off to some farm for it!
-So, in case I don´t write again for a while (which is most likely), we are staying here the weekend and then heading over to Venezuela! I have no clue when I will post from there. Chau!
-Aaaaand thank you for your prayers. Buses are awesome but probably the most crazy part, especially out here where it rains and everything is so soggy.....gorgeous, but very soggy.
-I ate a large ant. Pete ate a lot more, since he bought them, and they are even better when mixed with chocolate chips. They are quite pricey, $7000 pesos. They have a very protein-ish taste. Kind of similar to a roast beef sandwich, I think. They are like an inch long with very puffy two-part bodies (ewwww), and I suppose they must be popular in Bogota because many little restaurants display a sign proclaiming that they sell them. They are NOT my favorite snack.
-We learned to take the TransMilenio bus in Bogota. Their main in-city transportation system, only costing $1400 Colombian pesos to ride as much as you want. ($1650 to the dollar--this takes some adjusting to in calculations since it is not the easiest to divide by).
-Went to a huge salt mine outside of Bogota. We tried to take the train, but found out it didn´t run on weekdays. Oh well, saved $20,000 Col! We looked around the train yard, though, and Danl considered buying one......................
-We took a 10.5 hr bus to Bucaramanga, our first bus ride of the trip. Gracias a Dios, we actually made the bus and most importantly, we arrived safe and sound although we did get stopped by Colombian soldiers (that´s the good guys, though) and all the guys had to get off (and Dana--she didn´t know she wasn´t supposed to) and get searched. Meanwhile all the little girls on the bus blew kisses and waved to the soldiers as they looked thru peoples bags on the bus for drugs or whatever. Also, we went down the ´Pescadero´ to get down into Bucaramanga, which starts very high up and many hairpin curves later, we are down below... I was pretty thankful it was at night by that time so I didn´t have to see as well, although seeing clouds floating down below you hundreds of feet down is kind of disconcerting. The countryside is so, so beautiful though. One brother from Bogota (actually from Quito) who came with us was commenting on how beautiful Colombia was, but a very well-kept secret (perhaps guerillas help keep people away? haha)
-It´s really warm and humid here. We all got divided up among the families here, so Dana, Lana, Sal, and I are here on the third floor of this house living with this cute little family in a cute little apartment!!! But tonight the conference starts and I think we might be going off to some farm for it!
-So, in case I don´t write again for a while (which is most likely), we are staying here the weekend and then heading over to Venezuela! I have no clue when I will post from there. Chau!
-Aaaaand thank you for your prayers. Buses are awesome but probably the most crazy part, especially out here where it rains and everything is so soggy.....gorgeous, but very soggy.
Monday, June 23
Rest Day
We are still in Bogota until Wednesday, mostly because the bus that gives tours of the city is closed on Mondays, so we have to wait till Tuesday to take it. Today is shot day for people without Yellow Fever vaccinations. We are having fun!! We moved to another hotel; we fill up the 5th floor. The elevator doesn´t work so we have to go up a long spiral staircase (which is fun for us, but we are impressed by Danl and Rubio, who carried our 10000 suitcases up it while we had fun in the park yesterday visiting with everybody...).
Saturday, June 21
Bogota
Everyone made it to Bogota safely...I´m not quite sure just HOW the B.s made it, but they did. Today after breakfast we walked around the city passing out calendars, bookmarks, texts, the book of John, and tracts. Actually that´s pretty much what we did all day, wandering around and getting to know the city. A lot of people don´t want the stuff we´re handing out, but then we met some others who were Christians or were really interested, or who wanted more to hand out to other people. This city has a lot of similarities to Quito, but at the same time it´s really different from anywhere I´ve ever gone before,---the people especially in the way they act. Oh, and accents are different.... Anyway, we got introduced to Colombian food at lunch, which was typical fried plantain, egg, rice, carne asada, and then these gigantic frijoles plus a masamorra thing that was not the same as the Peruvian stuff, this was like corn in oatmeal. After lunch we got to meet one of the brothers, Pepe, who is a jeweler. He took us to his shop and showed us how gold is refined, so we could see what it means when the Bible says God refines us. Now we are back hereat the hotel hoping to have a Bible study with two guys we met on the street who had been held captive for 4 years by FARC. So far they haven´t showed up, so everyone is napping. The altitude is higher here, so it´s cold and rainy today. Right after meeting tomorrow we are hoping to relocate since this hotel is quite )a little too) luxurious. Actually the dollar is really weak here so we were a little surprised at some prices. However, $2 for lunch is pretty good, huh. Mmmm that´s about all I can think of so far! We plan to stay in Bogota till Tuesday early in the am. Thanx for all your prayers!
Tuesday, June 17
F.Y.I.
Sal, M, el Rubio, and Dave plan to fly to Bogota and meet CDBAND and Pete on June 20th. There we will spend the weekend and then take a 9-hr bus ride to Bucaramanga. More later!!
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